


The Backrooms

by FinVander



Category: Short Story - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinVander/pseuds/FinVander
Summary: There are still many things humanity has yet to learn about the world around us. Paige discovers this fact after escaping a wild party for some quiet time on the beach.
Kudos: 1





	The Backrooms

A soft sigh of contentment escaped my lips. The beach was so beautiful at night, especially when alone. I had ran away from the bustling house party just a few blocks away to bask in some much needed peace and quiet away from the college drunks. Although the air on the beach was eerie and almost creepy, I was much too tipsy to pay my gut much notice. I watched as the tide slowly washed up the sand, and covered my feet. But without warning, my feet were no longer sunken into the wet sand of the evening beach. They were atop musty smelling, slightly damp carpet. My breath caught in my throat, and I rubbed my eyes in an attempt to return to reality. I apprehensively opened my eyes once again. Now the old carpet was accompanied by painfully dull yellow wallpaper. The overly loud hum of ancient fluorescent lighting above me began to make itself known to me. What… What happened. Where the hell am I? 

I began to cautiously explore my surroundings, hands balled tightly into fists, but I was bewildered as each room only led to another exactly like it. I wondered what kind of hell-like maze I was lost in, and if I would ever find my way out. At the thought of never leaving these rooms, panic began to overcome me. Without a second thought, I started running through the never ending rooms like madman. I speeded through those rooms for what could have been hours. Time seemed altered, as I couldn't tell how much time had passed. Eventually, the hum of the fluorescent lights became unbearably loud, and I sunk to the carpet, sobbing. I was a pathetic mess, dry heaving as tears and snot ran down my face. My mind ran with unanswered questions. What is this place? How did I even get here? How will I survive here? The questioning of my survival was the last thought that crossed my mind before I drifted off to sleep in a corner, completely exhausted. 

My crusted eyelids sorely opened to reveal the same place I had closed them to. A familiar feeling of panic and confusion began to brew in my gut once again as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. But my tiredness quickly left me when I heard the first new noise since I had entered this place. Footsteps. I quickly shot up from my corner and began to run towards the noise, darting left and right entering the new identical rooms. I was finally close enough to see a sliver of what looked like a person dart around a corner. Now that I knew I was not alone in this place, I had to talk to them. Maybe they knew something about the endless maze we were in. “Hey, wait! Where the hell am I, I just want to know what’s going on!” 

Not even seconds after the words left my mouth, a clothed arm reached out from behind a wall and grabbed me, quickly holding a hand over my mouth to stop the yelling. “Quiet down, you idiot, or they will hear you!” A deep and panicked voice whispered. I was both relieved to see another person, as well as apprehensive of his intentions. Before I could ask him the burning question “Who will hear us?” The sick and twisted universe seemed to answer for me, as some ungodly creature turned a corner. It looked like a disfigured human on all fours, standing frozen, dead eyes staring in our direction. To my suprise, the man sighed in relief. I wondered why anybody would be relieved to see this absolutely terrifying creature. “Don't worry, it’s only a crawler. Just look away, and follow me, it won’t hurt you. They tend to not bother humans, as long as you don’t threaten it, it will leave us be. There are much worse creatures around here to worry about.” As off-putting as it was, I peeled my eyes away from the thing and followed him into another identical room. 

We walked for a bit, before he attempted to start a conversation, although he was quite awkward. “Sorry, it’s been a very long time since I have talked to another person.” Upon observation, he looked like he had been here for a while. Long, overgrown beard, accompanied by tired and sunken eyes. It never occurred to me until just now to ask the question that had been eating away at me since I arrived at this place. “So, where are we?” I asked, my voice coming out more timid than wanted it to. “This is the backrooms.” This didn’t seem to answer my question, and I tilted my head at him in confusion. His mind seemed to lag for a second. “Wait, you didn’t end up here by accident, did you?” He asked, exasperated. My mind nearly exploded at the thought of anybody coming to this hell-maze on purpose. I nodded my head. 

And at that, he delved into his long-winded explanation. "Every physical object in our reality is “clipped” to our dimension. Meaning if you run into it, you will bounce off of it, like running into a wall. But every once in a while, the universe glitches, like a video game, and you can go right through something. Everything is made of atoms, and if the atoms of two objects happen to slide by each other, rather than colliding, you can pass through it, causing this glitch. I believe it is possible to "noclip" out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the backrooms. Where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of dull yellow wallpaper, the endless background noise of ﬂuorescent lights at maximum hum, and approximately six hundred trillion square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. That is the scientific theory that I have developed over my time here. I don’t know how long I’ve been in this place, because time is altered here. All I can do to tell time is watch my beard grow.” He pointed to his scraggly beard, stroking it completely. 

His crazed and eccentric eyes glared at me, waiting for a response. At this point, I would not be surprised if he told me if smoke was billowing out of my ears at this very moment. “I-” My mind struggled to form coherent thoughts, let alone words. “I’m here, you’re here, how do we get out?” I queried. A small bit of hope began to breed in my mind. If he got here somehow, he had to know how to get out. “No actually, I haven’t gotten quite that far yet.” I felt as if my soul had shattered into a million pieces. This man was the textbook definition of a mad scientist, an absolute bat-shit lunatic. And I was stuck in this hell-maze, the backrooms, with him for god knows how long. Maybe forever. 

At this realization, my breath quickened and I began to tear up for what felt like the millionth time. “Hey now, don’t you worry. No matter how long we’re stuck in here, you’ve got me for company.” he soothed. This did not comfort me at all. Throughout our conversation, we had been leisurely walking through the musty smelling rooms, the only sound besides our conversation being the buzz of the old lights above. Not that walking was going to get us anywhere new, but it was a little comforting, like pacing when on the phone. Abruptly, my eyes met a patch on one of the mono-yellow walls that was a bit darker than the rest. I found it difficult to peel my eyes away, it being the only unique thing in this place. We exchanged uncertain galces, before he walked towards the patch, and I followed suit. We exchanged glances yet again, before simultaneously placing our hands on the spot on the wall. 

I don’t quite know what I expected to happen, but it certainly was not this. I looked at the floor to find it replaced with the wet sand and rolling tide once again. My head shot left and right, confirming that I was in fact where I was standing before the backrooms. My phone vibrated in my pocket, disrupting my flabbergasted state of mind. “Paige? Are you okay? You got roofied. Some creep at the party put something in your drink. Are you hallucinating or anything? Where are you?” My close friend, Rye, shouted into the phone in a panicked voice. I paused to take notice of my pounding headache, and queasy insides. “By the water.” I replied, too baffled to form a sentence longer than three words. At the sound of my voice, she sighed in relief, saying she was on her way to pick me up and take me home. I grunted and hung up. 

Turning around and stumbling my way up the beach to the road, I noticed a figure sitting tall atop the lifeguard chair. Upon further examination, I recognized it to be the man from the backrooms, noticeable by his long and scraggly beard. Surprising him, as well as myself, I shouted up to him. “I never caught your name.” He stared for a moment, but eventually replied. With a curious wink, he queried “Sorry, do I know you from somewhere?”


End file.
